Hotel
by Verdot
Summary: The children of fate didn't get that way on their own, and the world in peril didn't happen overnight. A look at the backstory characters, with a focus on Fury Caraway, Laguna Loire, and Edea Kramer, and others through a set of connected stories.
1. Hotel Intro

All of these stories are actually songfics from a really awesome community on livejournal, but since those aren't allowed here I took out the lyrics bits. All of these stories are set to a song on Moby's "Hotel" album, which really seems to get me thinking about all the backstory dudes in FF8, who I wanted to know more about (not to diss on the main characters, but I went through high school YEARS ago, I'd rather not rehash that craziness).

* * *

"Be careful with that, idiot. Don't you know that Julia Heartilly used to play at that piano?"

The workers had already gutted the rooms, but for reasons probably nostalgic and maybe a little lazy they'd just gotten to the bar. The whole place smelled like bleach after the somewhat intense mold removal. Downtown Deling City had slowly gone to ruin over the years; the streets filled with old papers and trash, the majestic station almost like a dry sewer. Renovating the Galbadia Hotel was the start of the rebuilding process, even if no one was particularly enthuisiatic about the prospect.

Galbadia was going the way of Centra, and everyone knew it.

"Well, gee Lou, never figured you for the sentimental type."

"It's history, not sentiment. History's important."

Once, it had been a city of lights and happenings. The palace was an estate instead of the crumbled remains of a tower and the gateway's arch used to awe and welcome instead of forbode. But one thing had stood the times, even as the mold rotted her insides. The Galbadia Hotel.

"You still sound like an old timer. These are progressive times! This is old news. I don't get why the Commander would care about a place like this at all."

Before Fate, there was Destiny.

"You really don't know, do you? Back in the day, teenagers didn't make the world. Maybe it's time you got it straight."

Before a boy and his friends, there was a general, a soldier, and a Sorceress.


	2. Raining Again

_We didn't even stop to see that  
That It was breaking me and  
the world is coming out so cold  
What you want you couldn't get, you  
Couldn't wait for something less, you  
had to give up everything you knew_

- "Raining Again", Moby

It was pouring, but since Fury Caraway had become a general, he never seemed to have to get wet anymore. When he'd signed up, like any young man that had any sense of decency, he remembered sitting out in storms for nearly twelve hours, just to watch a communications tower. But all that time was for nothing now. The airwaves weren't under any of their controls and only contained sickening laughter anyway.

The days of dodging small time rebels were over. He didn't know whether he was glad for that or not.

"We should be there soon, General. The Palace is in sight."

Timber. Of all the places, Timber gave them the most problems. Leave it to pacifists to compound a real war by continuing to _fight_. How could people complain of trees when the magic and metal of Esthar was breathing down their necks?

"Yes, thank you for that, Corporal."

It wasn't like he hungered for power--promotion came to him because he stood his ground. Death listened when he told her to back down, because he wasn't ready yet. Respect was earned, not taken, even from idealistic concepts.

If only he could ever get that across, when stories of heroes and delusions of knights clouded reason. Reckless heroics.

_ooo_

He wasn't old yet, really, but the Private that held the umbrella for him was the youngest he'd seen. Caraway would have thought he was just small if not for the babyface, and it chilled him more than the rain did.

Let it be a quick war, he thought. Invasions of ill-prepared small nations were one thing; an all out war with a formidable enemy was another.

"The President is anxious to see you."

It was time to put his calm face on, and to stop thinking about young men and women in remote outposts with little contact.

His own privilege meant he had long since stopped being awed by the size and richness of the Presidential Palace. It wasn't the most beautiful place in Deling City anyway, despite its size and various spoils cast around in an attempt at rich decorating. He'd only ever seemed to find beauty in the hotel, after all the talks ended and he was alone with drink he allowed himself. Elegance would never really die.

Vinzer Deling was starting to pick up a bit of a nouveau riche attitude these days.

"Great work with Timber, Caraway! It's dealt quite the blow to Esthar."

Not yet. Not when there were people more concerned about trees and such idiocies.

"You always open with flattery, don't you? What's gone wrong."

_ooo_

Deling City always knew when he was called to do something difficult. Caraway was a general because of respect and tenacity, but sometimes even the hairs on his arms stood. He would have to redirect so many troupes, with this new intel, swap out more young men and women from their various lonely outposts, and hope not too many were lost in the process.

The clouds over Deling City sent staccato rain onto the roof of his car, as if to pound the worries out of his head.

"Could you go to the hotel instead? I'm not quite ready to go home yet."

"I heard Miss Heartilly's playing tonight."

Julia Heartilly always played on nights like these.

"I know."

_ooo_

Laguna Loire was starting to think his mother had been right about the whole soldier thing. So far it had been a lot of sitting around watching metal stuff and getting drenched and then getting yelled at. And he'd used to like water, but now he was getting kind of sick of it. Sure, it let him travel, but the new Galbadian territories... well. Spectacular, they were not.

"If you hadn't lost that key..."

"We'll find it! You and Ward and eat my chocolate ration if we don't find it tonight."

"Deal."

At least he wasn't alone. This whole gig would have really sucked without his new gang for life. Kiros was really smart, and Ward was really big, and since he was really brave, it worked out in a nice balanced way. Well, Laguna liked to think of himself as brave. They were fighting a war, it was a good trait to have, right?

He was probably going to get the talk from the base commander again about not wearing his helmet, but it smelled funny. And it wasn't like it was going to keep him any drier, what with a _monsoon_ happening.

"I think I saw something shiny over here."

"You sure it wasn't in your head?"

"Ha ha, very funny!"

Someday, if he was going to be searching for missing car keys, it was going to be for a great reason. And he'd write about scuttling around in the mud like an unpleasant dream.

_ooo_

Of course he came back to camp in triumph. Sort of.

"I can't believe it was in your pocket."

"Well I never thought to check there!"

"I say we get your chocolate ration anyway."

Maybe even in war time, there were places that were less muddled, places where the sun always shone and there were no rations, but carts filled with fruits. It made him a dreamer, to try and think of the cold water dripping off his face as the gentle pat of sunlight instead. It didn't make him miss home, really. Laguna was a man of the world now, not some shut-in playing with radio signals in the basement.

Not like radio signals worked very well now anyway.

Kiros had been charged with returning the key to the camp commander's vehicle, on the insistence of Ward, so he'd wandered. A punch to the shoulder brought him back to the grey.

"What you thinking about now?"

Laguna smiled. "The kinds of places we'll go once we're out of here. Bright sunny places, where people are friendly and we don't have to hoard rations."

They all jumped a little when the camp commander peaked out of his tent and then walked towards them. Laguna in particular avoided any contact with the car.

The man was positively _beaming_. "Loire, you're not my problem anymore."

"Sir?"

"Platoon's being relocated to Deling City. First thing in the morning."

_ooo _

He might have been going home, but he was moving, and he could almost feels the tides of conflict move with him. Laguna wanted to hit the acclerator as hard as he could and let the cold and damp rush past him, but Kiros has insisted on driving that leg. They were in a convey, after all.

"Just wait 'til you see the lights! Deling City is alive at night. That's why they call it the City of Sparks."

"I've never heard that."

"Me either."

"Well, they call it... they call it something like that!"

"Don't you mean lights?"

He crossed his arms and sat lower in his seat. Alright, he wasn't the best soldier or rememberer of famous quotes and sayings. It wasn't like he wanted to become a general or anything crazy like that. 'Laguna Loire, the Butcher of Winhill' or something just didn't sound right. This wasn't where the heroics were, despite the stories of battles and knights. He figured that in all reality those types were less violent things. Like maybe librarians.

At least when he came back to Deling City, he had a snappy uniform, despite the annoying helmet.

_ooo_

A week of talks and one particularly long strategy session later and Caraway found himself again at the hotel bar, doing his best impression of a booth cushion. As a public figure he could never really blend in, considering the large amounts of sucking up from the bartender tonight, he was among fans.

It was Julia's off night. Even without her presence, the place still contained some of her grace, and it was enough. Had to be enough. Caraway couldn't just walk the streets like he had as a teenager, worrying the old nanny about his whereabouts, not since he'd been tempered into the very sword hilt of Galbadia.

There hadn't been an attempt on his life since the beginning of the Timber occupation, even. Conflict was avoiding him like the weather. And he still had the same umbrella-carrier.

"Sir, you're tracking mud in here, this is not some saloon!"

"Oh sorry! I should go back to the front and wipe off on the rug, huh?"

Caraway turned his head a little, to see the disturbance into his chance to unwind. One of his bodyguards put a fingertip touch to his sidearm, but he waved it off. Those uniforms were Galbadian Infantry, and the owners of them were in perhaps the most oddly mixed platoon he'd ever seen.

"Sir, I'm going to have to ask you to leave and come back with _proper attire_."

The offending one had carelessly loose hair and rambled on some more before the dark lithe one pulled on his elbow. The massive one gave the manager an intimidating look before following the other two, lumbering out of sight.

Recruitment certainly wasn't what it used to be. He frowned at the thought.

_ooo_

They became regulars, of course. A small petty part of him thought about the type of power he had, especially when it came to location orders, but it wouldn't have been very principled of him. Eventually the snippets of banter blended in with the architecture, and he paid hardly any mind to them. It wasn't every night, and there was always near silence on the nights when Julia played.

She had that effect on people.

The Heartillys and Caraways were similar families, too; old money, old ideas, rigid traditions. In the times she played, he liked to think they were both getting their rebellions out, and it connected them in between the lines of their friendly conversations. Her parents couldn't have approved of their only daughter wearing slinky dresses and playing in a bar--even if it was a swanky one.

"Good evening, Fury. You've had more time this week?"

"Sometimes I make time. You look lovely."

The conversations of class were a dance that was sometimes rigid, but if she felt stiff, she never let it show. Sometimes his collar felt too tight and he was too proud to loosen it, even in his time off. Vinzer Deling could have ordered him to untuck his shirt and he would have tried to argue against it, citing the fact that he would fall apart, maybe.

"Thank you."

When her eyes flicked beyond him, only for instants, so small that someone else wouldn't notice, he kept the conversation where it was supposed to be. No romantic notions like 'let's just go outside now, even if we'll get soaked to the bone and dance' would make it past the back of his mind, even if the laughter in that one corner caused the side of her mouth to quirk up a little.

It was those days that he wondered if kind words and diplomacy really meant a damn.

_ooo_

He had been in the war room for nearly three days straight the night that she invited someone to her room. He'd been there earlier in the evening, for a little while, before he'd been called back on word that a spy had been caught near the missiles. Caraway had been present during the man's interrogation, silent behind pane glass while two lieutenants worked the names of others in the conspiracy out of his flesh.

And he thought, that this was what he was protecting, standing there as a traitor screamed out any name he could think of. The right for her to laugh with someone else. Nobility was worth twice its weight in heroics. Or so he told himself.

He didn't know then, of course, whose order he signed that morning. Just another platoon to a sensitive area. There were red spots in his eyes, like a man's secrets spilled on pavement or the velvet of her favorite dress.

Caraway decided that this would be the last war, then. Even if it meant putting a soldier in every home, to keep people from fighting. Even if it meant sending Esthar to that cursed moon.

There was still enough grace to go around to be worth protecting.

_ooo_

Maybe it was destiny or something big like that which had called him away just when Laguna had an excuse to never leave home. But then, she wouldn't have liked that. Julia had dreams, she understood that the world was telling him to go go go. But man oh man, his luck was sure funny.

"I'm sure she'll wait on you."

But waiting was all Laguna had been doing in this war; waiting to _do_ something and _be_ something more than a watcher and an errand boy with a gun. Even if he wasn't a writer yet, he knew that he really had it in him. And she'd _known_ because writers knew each other like other people couldn't. Right?

"I guess it's ok if she doesn't, adventure aggravates!"

"Awaits."

"You know what I mean!"

He smiled as he waved goodbye to Deling City, because that was what the hero did as he was going off to war; for real this time. Important missions, intrigue--he was already caught up in the story, even if it didn't happen yet.

What could go wrong?

_ooo_

No amount of optimism or wishing could have prepared him for the sheer amount of trouble that came his way. To think that his luck had run out only just a little time after leaving Deling City! Kiros and Ward were down, and he was backed up to a cliff.

He wasn't going down like some playing piece on Vinzer Deling and General Caraway and Sorceress Adel's giant playing board. Maybe he hadn't seen the world, but he could certainly see to it that his friends would.

Laguna Loire; the quickest failure in history.

What was he thinking? What failure? He hadn't left home for fame or fortune. He'd only wanted to write to... people were connections. Like that old radio he had when he was weird and kind of ugly and had no friends. He'd talked to _Julia Heartilly_ without passing out, and had just about the best backup a guy could ask for.

He tossed them first, ignoring that shaky feeling in his knee.

"Her name was Julia, and she was nice to me," he whispered, just to make it stick.

And then he jumped.

_ooo _

"I still don't get why you fished him out. That uniform's Galbadian."

"Well they're our allies."

"By force."

"Would you quiet, I'm trying to work. He might be useful."

The voices seemed to replay themselves, and sometimes he thought they were Kiros and Ward, not the old woman and the younger one that were really speaking most of the time.

Laguna had been unconscious during the time that General Caraway got up the courage to propose to Julia. He was walking again by the time it was made official, out in the country where the air was clear and the first round of Estharian raids had calmed.

He thought that maybe he missed the war, and when he slept there was the tapping of rain that never came in Winhill. At least not as often. The mad rush of destiny slowed down to his limp, and there certainly were no stars in his practical caretaker's eyes.

He was fully awake when the tiny little bar's radio caught the barest whiff of a song, in between the static, and maybe there was something wibbly inside him.

"I know that song."


	3. Beautiful

_Look at us we're beautiful,  
All the people push and pull but,  
They'll never get inside,  
We got too much to hide_

- "Beautiful", Moby

* * *

The wedding of Fury Caraway and Julia Heartilly was extravagant even by the ancient Centran terms. While Galbadia liked to pride itself as a nation of discipline and power, there were always the small lovelies underneath. In the art and the music especially, which seemed to attach itself to the buildings and seep into the streets of Deling City in particular.

There were fireworks and everyone took their pictures.

Caraway had wanted to wait until the war ended, in all actuality, but it had been the President's idea to bump the date up. He was enough of a politician to understand the move, but despite the public--and was it ever public--nature of the event, he managed to keep her away from open places where a well-placed Estharian sniper could make quick work of his hopes and dreams.

Julia herself probably didn't even know the extent of his sappy and stubborn love.

_ooo_

"I hope you don't my me... talking about this with you."

"I said I was your friend, Julia, no matter how many bits of frill they put on my uniform."

"But you always seem so...polite. And I'm not sure what to talk about in polite society."

"You can't have been a musician so long as to have really forgotten polite society isn't polite at all."

_ooo_

The papers would later try to paint it as a typical princess story; the struggling musician meets the handsome general and they buy a castle and proceed to rule the world. But the Heartillys and Caraways had never been invisible families in Galbadian history, and in both their youths there had been times the press caught up with their growing pains. The fact that neither of them ended up as just another old money child drinking their trust funds and burning their estates for parties was part of the reason he had probably always been a little silly over her.

Julia was no commoner; she was as royal as the modern age allowed. And he certainly was no looker.

And reputations always lead in the front, so when he first heard of Julia, he actually didn't like her. The only daughter of the old time Heartillys wanted to be a musician? It seemed flippant. Caraway had spent years trying to live up to his brothers, only to give up and join the army as soon as he was old enough.

Of course, hearing about someone and meeting them were entirely different things.

_ooo_

"When did you become so..."

"Forward? Well, we're actually talking like friends now. I suppose that's the best thing to do."

"What sort of dreams do you have, Fury?"

"To see the end of the war. And you?"

"To sing, of course. And to..."

"To see the romantic again, right?"

_ooo_

It was a cliche, love at first sight. And he didn't love her; he still knew that she was the moony and dreamy daughter of a family as old and powerful as his. But she was beautiful and oddly... oddly sad. And he wanted to know why, really. Fourteen years old was too young to look that sad. She had both her parents, no missing siblings. She was afforded all manner of luxuries, and yet. Julia was a very tiny Lady Sorrow. A petite version of the blues.

He kept an eye on her, from afar, because he was in all the advanced classes, when she made as much room as he made for advancement for music. They were in the same literature class, and he could have sworn he saw her doodling notes on a staff instead of words.

Caraway was too old to imagine himself as a champion, but he was maybe just a little jealous of people that could make her smile.

But he was secretly happy that the first time they met--not just the rehearsed speeches in his head for the pretty girl that everyone noticed--she laughed.

_"You look so serious. It's kind of funny."_

_ooo_

The difference between them wasn't dreams; she had to understand he'd use up all the money and influence he'd gained to make her smile. And that was really frightening to him sometimes, to think that he'd throw anything away for a woman that might not even like him. But even the General Caraway took risks, after weighing the options.

No, the difference between them was dedication. Once a man realized that Julia Heartilly's only love was her music, they couldn't be jealous.

_ooo_

"You know how rare it is for people to connect?"

"I'm very well aware of that."

"We connected."

"And what do you think would come of it?"

"I don't know."

"Neither do I with you, sometimes."

_ooo_

Not all of the press bought into it, of course. Especially during their honeymoon--or rather, her tour--as she finally got what she wanted. Anyone can turn an angle ugly, even if they're not the loudest voices. He liked to burn those articles, the ones talking about how she'd married him for her career, or that she had lovers on the side.

Funny how no one accused him of being a rebound.

But how could they know what the song was about? It was the kind of song that anyone could turn into their own, the kind of song that sometimes he wondered if he could maybe turn around to be about him. Hadn't he been there for years, trying to get up the courage to ask her to stop looking so sad? To tell her he understood her when she thought she was invisible?

Those kinds of stories don't make the papers.

_ooo_

"I want to marry you, Julia."

"Why?"

"Because I'd hate to see you pine away over something so brief."

"Not because you love me?"

"Isn't that a little irrelevant?"

_ooo_

He'd had to change out of his uniform to get backstage, and her piano was just striking out the last notes of her famous song. The sounds the crowd made nearly shook the rickety scaffolds for props of some long forgotten play. He had security everywhere, and yet, he'd let her go on.

That flushed look, the surprise that registered in her eyes as she saw him, her husband, just a man, that was enough.

Only the types of security he knew best ever got backstage. Part of him hoped they would take a picture, sell it to the press. Show that Mr. and Mrs. Caraway really weren't playing to the cameras when they embraced. It was all a matter of knowing his place.

"You came."

"You know I always love to hear you play."


	4. Lift Me Up

_Plain talking (Plain talking)  
Served us so well (served us so well)  
We traveled through hell (traveled through hell)  
And oh how we fell (Oh how we fell)_

_- Moby, "Lift Me Up"  
_

She'd been Edea _Kramer_ for two days now and still hadn't called her parents to tell them.

They would blame Cid, because that was what parents did when their daughters ran off to Deling City with a boy to get eloped. It was some kind of section in the parent manual that outlined the dangers of nice marryable young men and how they should be kept from impressionable young sorceresses.

They would eventually have to go home, but the beds at the Galbadia Hotel were so soft, and she was just fairly giddy with what they'd just done.

"Edee, your brothers are going to kill me. And then your mother."

"Probably." Edea was always honest with Cid. Even about things that fairly horrified him.

She smoothed the cowlick his hair developed in his sleep. Mother didn't hate Cid, but she didn't like him either. She could never explain to Cid the delicate balance of feelings there; it was never _him_ but the choice he represented. Mother was a powerful woman from a time when powerful women needed to be on someone's arm. To have her daughter do just that?

"I'll protect you. From them. Promise."

He propped himself on his elbow. "But aren't I supposed to protect you?"

"It's symbiotic."

She liked to think that this was how should could prove that yes, she'd grown up. Edea was eighteen now, and married. She could do as she chose to.

_ooo_

For all the romance she'd been promised in books and all the things she thought of from when she first met Cid, she had never quite realized how quickly the money she'd brought for this trip would dwindle.

"Miss, this card is declined. Do you have another?"

"Well, no."

It had been the case since she had gained the powers that she could never fully sleep through the night. So she had figured that picking Cid up something nice would be a good surprise. He slept like a log. And snored.

"Then I can't sell this to you."

She frowned, before remembering that Cid had given her a little solid gil in case of emergencies. She counted it out; enough for her purchase. There.

It would have been cheaper back at the university, but she had wanted something from Deling City. All the jet-set girls that her brothers liked to date did that. Maybe she should have gone out with them more, like Mother had suggested. But Edea had always been a little shy, especially around those types of colorful girls.

How the city looked different this time of night, when they put some of the lights out. Even still, it was hard to see the sky like she preferred to watch it on the coast; only the brightest of pinpricks came out of the black, instead of the near endless ones.

She nearly set him on fire, he startled her so much.

"What were you doing?!" Cid rarely raised his voice. It wasn't the way he operated, the way _they_ operated. In the two years since she'd worked up the courage to approach him, she'd only seen him do it once.

"I went for a walk and found a present for you."

He glanced at the bag in her hands, and tried to say a few things but he could only open and close his mouth in a futile gesture.

"Is something wrong?"

"Edea, of course something is wrong. It's 3 am and you're out by yourself and you aren't exactly a large ugly thug of a man or anything!"

She would have found it funny if he didn't look quite so... pained really. Like she had almost gotten eaten by a monster or kidnapped by pirates. Like he couldn't breathe. Did she cause that effect on him with something so innocuous?

"I couldn' sleep."

"Then wake me up."

"But you were sleeping."

"I'm not your chaperone, I'm your husband. Have some... sense?" He pulled the bag from her hands, not even looking at the contents. "And we have to return this. I thought you understood that we can't act like we're a Caraway on vacation."

She bit her lip and followed him. He was really _angry._ Their bond didn't mean she could read everything of his, and she respected him enough not to invade in on his feelings, but the strong ones always punctuated in the back of her mind. Anger felt almost like a sneeze.

When he'd returned it--a trinket really, nothing of importance--he turned to her with tense shoulders. At this time of night, she could pretend like they were the only two people on the earth. It was less romantic when he was angry and disappointed.

"I want you to understand. I don't want to be like... like one of those paranoid types that lock up their wives for fear of everything. But I want you to think of me when you decide on things. I'll always think of you."

The thing about destiny was a person had to make a choice. She'd chosen him, over so many other things she could have done. But the part she always forgot was that he had made a choice too. And it was likely the more difficult one.

"I'm sorry. Walk with me? I can't sleep."

The years would probably mean every argument or almost argument didn't end like this. She imagined the tension draining out of his back as he walked with her, papercut scarred hand firmly around hers. Some day they were bound to find something they couldn't fix. Edea didn't want to know what that would be, and the realization was troubling.

This was why sorceresses couldn't sleep.

"If you want the night to yourself, we should find somewhere to live where you can have it."

_ooo_

Their wedding present didn't mean that she was forgiven, but that her parents still loved her despite.

She had waited until they were home, at least as much of a home as the little place that Cid got as a part of his assistant professorship provided before calling her mother. Edea had been startled by how little she had said concerning the matter, as Mother never held back an opinion. The dinner they had been invited to as a result was filled with small talk and only the occasional glance at the ring on her finger.

"I wish you'd told us, Edea. We could have used the beach cottage for the wedding."

Two of her three brothers were there, the oldest had his own family to worry about. Edea kept her head down, not wanting to look at Father. She hadn't really thought he would be disappointed in not giving her away.

Cid squeezed her hand under the table.

"Which is why we're just going to give it to you, instead."

Maybe a summer home wasn't a practical home all the year round, but that didn't register really. While the main house had been their technical home, she had always felt like she'd grown up at the beach cottage. Since she and her brothers had grown up it had been sitting, waiting, waiting for children to go run around it again...

"Thank you. Thank you... so much."

No doubt there would be conversations later, where her wasted potential was mentioned, where all the things she should have been doing because she'd wandered off and found a dying woman when she was five were discussed at length. But now she was hugging her father and mother and hoping that maybe it would all just turn out all right.

_ooo_

She had gone for a swim because she loved everything about water, how she could manipulate it and it would never get out of her control. For some it was being on the solid earth, but for her it had always been floating in the ocean, pretending like she was the only one left in the world. Well, maybe one of two left in the world.

A normal person would have frozen to death in this water. But Edea had long since learned that she could be far colder than anything else around her and it would never hurt.

Cid had put on every knit he owned, it seemed, to come out to her.

"Love, it's dinnertime."

The house was a blessing and a curse all at once. They had moved in during the rainy season, and due to a few years without children and thus without an immediate need to care for it, the roof had developed holes all over. Small rodent creatures had moved in and she had begged Cid to do his knightly duty and get rid of them while she stood on a chair. But not to hurt them of course, just to get them out of the house.

Sorceress powers or not, she did not like those things.

Now the water was cold and the skies were grey and she had Cid watch the soup while it simmered since he preferred to stay indoors where it was warm. The blessing of the house was it had been paid for by her grandfather years ago, so there was no need for silly things like a mortgage or rent. Cid could keep teaching that way and she could be a wife.

She shouldn't have had to feel guilty about a quiet life.

The water soaked into her skin, leaving her nearly dry when she took his bulky sweatered arm. "I think maybe this phase it will happen. I have a good feeling about now."

Edea had mastered the art of the wife of a librarian and teacher, now she wanted to go to the next level and become a mother. Children always fixed the small fractures of a family, and she wanted her mother to finally understand that maybe she had always wanted to be like her. Not to surpass her.

"You don't have to rush it, Edee. We'll be plenty young for quite some time."

She would ignore the pang of magic through her heart for now.

_ooo_

The barest truths always came to her in dreams.

Someone else's dark haired child had come to Edea, with strings of clock faces making bangles on her arms. She was small, couldn't have been older than six or so. She had smiled the sweetest of smiles and said;

_in you there is only death_

So that she woke up crying, which was a thing that had never felt right since she was almost too small to remember. Edea was quiet enough not to wake Cid, though she knew he would wake despite. Sometimes she regretted that the tug of her emotions would inevitably go to him, and that even before she had the courage to talk to him he'd dreamed of her because she had seen him. It wasn't fate, it was potential. And she'd dried up one path of potential by simply existing.

Edea couldn't be sure what made her leave the room and go to the single telephone they had in the house; something antique and rotary so that she wouldn't accidentally break it like a lot of technological things. She picked up the phone, and called her mother.

They, the generations of women, would never be severed because even the proud grown daughter could again become the small and lost child. They would never be severed because even when ambitions and expectations could steel her mother's voice, it would soften at her daughter's sobs.

Cid waited, like he did when she was out swimming, waited for her to come back to shore. That was the strength in them, the small patiences that they worked on because they believed so keenly in the _together_ moreso than the apart. He waited for her mother's voice to assure her that there were no failures, that she would always find a way. Edea had always found a way around the things that threatened her; even if that was sometimes herself.

He sat with her as she hung up the phone, and told her they would find another way. Because Cid always found a way too.

_ooo_

"The hell am I supposed to do with her? She keeps wailing and I can't get her to stop."

"She's just a child. They do that."

"Well that's why I don't have any brats. You pick her up or something."

On the shore she could pretend that the rest of the world didn't matter, didn't happen at all. Cid had noticed how scrubbed and clean their little cottage was, and had talked her into coming into town with him. But his tiny office had felt suffocating, and she left a note and went for a walk.

She had noticed the child before the uniformed men, because she couldn't help but suddenly see children everywhere, as if they were mocking her. But this one was not the bouncy kind, holding her father's hand.

"Hey lady, what are you staring for?"

Edea sometimes forgot that she only wished she were invisible. Of all powers, couldn't she have had that one?

The little blonde toddler had red rings around her blue eyes but when she looked at Edea, her crying quieted to just a quiver of her tiny mouth. In all her own laments about motherhood without children, she'd almost forgotten about children without parents.

"This is not your child?"

"Oh heck no. Found her wandering around one of the outer villages. Sarge told us to find her family, but we couldn't find anyone still breathing." The taller one was obviously the one who thought he was in charge.

"We figured that since there was a university around here we'd get some information on where to put her." And the shorter one was obviously the more knowledgeable one.

Edea approached slowly, timidly, and crouched down at the little girl's level. The taller soldier opened his mouth to say something, but his partner shook his head. She hadn't even bothered to learn what side they were fighting for. Then again, did that ever really matter?

The little girl held her chin up, and Edea smiled. The girl grinned back. _Children are unafraid of death, because they don't know it exists._

"I'll find her a home."

"Ah, ma'am, we can't exactly just..."

"My husband's a professor around here, I assure you we aren't anything unsavory."

_ooo_

He didn't even look surprised to see her sitting with a child in her lap in his office. Edea had learned the girl's name from the embroidery on the tattered remains of her blanket and had found her some candy before settling into her husband's office.

"Is she..."

"She has no parents. And I have an idea. We can't leave her alone."

She could see all the possibilities and practicalities pass behind his glasses before he chuckled. "Only you, Edee. Only you."

Edea had always known the bookish ones had the most potential as far as fathers went. And she had to be her mother's daughter, judging by the ambitions for more orphans that ran in the back of her mind. Parents without children and children without parents; she couldn't think of anything worse in the world. She would take care of them all if she had to.

"You want to show her some books, Cid? I think Quistis is a clever one."


	5. Where You End

_I love you and you're beautiful  
You write your own songs  
What if the right part of leaving  
Turned out to be wrong_  
- Moby, "Where You End"

A broken heart was supposed to be a localized ouch. This was really not a localized ouch at all. This was all over body pain and he _really_ didn't like it. His _eyebrows_ hurt.

"Where am I?"

"It's called Winhill, and you're lucky I didn't leave you out where the residents could beat you to death."

Laguna's first solid impression of the woman was that her voice was incredibly _grating_. The kind of voice that a person got when someone killed their puppy and they never dreamed again.

"...Why would they beat me to death, I didn't do anything!" Ow. Ow ow ow. He needed to learn to talk less enthusiastically. Better yet, not talk much at all.

Laguna Loire was no puppy killer, though, and he needed this humorless woman to believe him.

"I don't want to get political."

"Political?"

"Do you have amnesia or are you... really ignorant?"

Grating, and intelligent. And since his vision made everything into colorful fuzzy blobs, he decided that this woman must have been a bajillion years old and giving him very disapproving looks. Big nose optional.

"I kind of fell off a cliff, I'm sort of jumbled?" Weren't nurses-if that's what she was-or good people that brought strangers from the brink of death supposed to be a little more patient?

She sighed. "You're wearing a Galbadian uniform. Galbadia has been occupying various surrounding territories. Winhill's in a territory..."

"People don't like the military? I'm not a very good soldier, promise."

She snorted. "Nevermind. Get some rest."

He reached out, groping for a hand. He got a sweater. "Wait. What's your name?"

"Raine." Laguna had to wonder what kind of parents she had, to name her after the most gloomy kind of weather.

_ooo_

It occurred to him about halfway through the song that he was a fair measure tone deaf. But he continued on anyway, because Raine was gone and he was obviously alone.

"Why are you so loud, mister?"

The voice was very short. Well, the person that the voice came from. He was still seeing blurs instead of shapes and faces, but the blurs were starting to become more defined. He shifted so he could almost see over the edge of the bed, and sure enough there was a small moving shape.

"Because I hurt."

She-because it was most definitely a little girl-giggled. Giggled at his _pain._ But then, Kiros or Ward would have done the same thing. Oh, he hoped they had come out alright...

"You made my EARS hurt."

Here he was, Laguna Loire, already a failed soldier listening to a little girl tell him that he couldn't sing either. It was enough to make him sigh semi-dramatically.

"Sorry. I didn't mean to."

"It's ok. Why do you hurt?"

Maybe because he'd very heroically leaped from a cliff, after having the most fantastic night of his life talking with the most beautiful woman he'd never see again. And she wasn't likely to remember his name at this point either, not with how slowly he was recovering.

"Do you know what love is, kiddo?"

He could _hear_ the face she was making. "That kissy stuff?"

"Close enough. Well, I lost my love and my dignity."

"You could draw a picture? Always makes me feel better when I'm sad."

Laguna's first solid impression of the girl was that he rather liked the way she thought for as young as she was.

"Maybe when I can see again. Got a name, kiddo?"

"Ellone! Raine says it's a special name, that's why it sounds different."

_ooo_

His vision had returned with its previous sharp clarity, and he was sitting up more than laying down during the day. Ellone was around him the most, hopping in with her bobbed hair and fresh crayons. Laguna had half a mind to ask how she always had new crayons, but he didn't want to accuse her of anything. She was really sweet, after all.

Didn't really see Raine much, despite the fact she was the one caring for him.

"See my picture! See my picture!"

Ellone was usually content to sit on his bed, careful to avoid the leg that was still in a cast, and color various childish things, which she'd show him with a zeal that sometimes almost upset the state of that cast. Laguna didn't do much drawing with the way his hands sometimes shook, but he had put his restored vision to use and gave her the oral version of the reviews he imagined he would write at real art shows.

"The use of smudging is very modern, while the colors are very traditional. Bold use of squiggles."

"You sound weird."

"I'm being a critic, Ellone. That's what they sound like."

"Just tell me it looks pretty."

"It looks pretty."

Literary prowess was somewhat lost on small children. At least he tried. Ellone didn't seem to mind; she always told him when he was being 'weird' or 'silly'.

"I think Laguna needs to rest now." He nearly jumped at the sound of Raine's voice, though he really shouldn't have. Laguna never did have a good sense of where people were. He'd been the only kid on the block that never could win at hide-and-seek; neither hiding nor finding.

"I'll bring more pictures later, Goona." Ellone scampered off, dark hair flying wildly around her face.

"You're very good with kids. Siblings?" It was the first time that Laguna recalled Raine being warm at all; of course, it was obvious that Ellone meant quite a bit to her.

The funny thing about the injury was that his leg didn't cramp up at all. Too broken or something. Then again, Raine wasn't exactly the type of woman that would make his leg cramp up anyway. "I guess kids just know I'm silly and aren't bothered by it."

She patted him on the shoulder. "Whoever she was, you certainly won't win her over with your singing. That's for sure. At least Ellone's a fan of your critiques."

Somehow, the backhanded compliment was better than any amount of pity he could get. Between Raine and Ellone he wasn't going to get the royal treatment. And that was strangely alright.

_ooo_

One night he dreamt of what might have been.

Laguna was in the hotel room, talking with her. He could feel the cramps in his leg and Julia was so unearthly beautiful, in a way that only dreams can make happen. They touched and all formalities flew out the window. He was lost in the silk of her dress, the way she tasted a bit like candy, the kind that he used to get in trouble for sneaking before dinner. Laguna himself was different too; more sure, able to make her graceful back arc with just a few words and a brush of his fingertips.

But it was only a dream. Even when he was dreaming Laguna knew it could never be real, because he wasn't that man. And he was starting to suspect that all that time watching Julia and never speaking to her meant that she wasn't that woman either.

_ooo_

He was leaning on Raine's shoulder while Ellone held his hand the first time he went outside after getting injured. Laguna hadn't gotten a proper look at Winhill, considering he was nearly dead when he came to it, but there was something about the way that the sunlight hit everything that made it even more beautiful than Deling at night.

"Don't be a baby, go on, try standing on your own. If you fall Ellone and I will just drag you back inside."

He was getting used to the fact that things that came from Raine's mouth weren't as harsh as they seemed to be if they had come from someone else. Still, he didn't really want to let go of her shoulder; it was like she had taken over for both Kiros and Ward, and he was never quite sure since he left home if he could stand on his own.

"I don't want to be a bother..."

"Oh you already are. Come on now. Just a few steps."

Ellone had let go of his other hand, strangely quiet, just watching. Despite her closeness with Raine, Ellone looked at him like some kind of hero. Well, he wasn't going to let her down, at least.

The first step was the hardest, and he almost hit Raine in the face with his elbow. But she dodged and he kept on for a few more steps before he felt winded.

"Good job Goona!"

Laguna flashed Ellone a smile before looking over at Raine. He could almost swear that she had smiled too, if only for a moment. The sunlight framed her short dark hair like a dirty halo, which was strangely fitting.

Of course, that was when he decided to get fancy and fell on his ass.

Before he blacked out he noticed that both Ellone and Raine were at his side in an instant, and it was Raine that was holding his hand this time. He might have said something, too, he only hoped that it wasn't ridiculous and he didn't make the mistake of calling Raine the wrong name.

_ooo_

"Raine says you're inserfable."

"Inserfable? Do you mean insufferable?"

"Yeah! That word."

Laguna wished the word insufferable meant that he didn't suffer. But after his wonderful demonstration of his kinetic prowess, he found himself doing just that. If it wasn't the pain in his leg, it was the daggers that Raine seemed to be shooting out of her eyes at him.

"I don't mean to be so much trouble."

At least Ellone was around, more his peer than he wanted to admit.

"You're just silly, Goona. And Raine likes you."

And Ellone wanted things to be better than they were, just like he did.

"She's got a strange way of showing it."

Ellone shrugged. "She gets REALLY mad at bad people. You're not bad."

"Well, when I get better, I'm going to make sure no more bad people come back this way. I was a fine soldier once, you know."

Raine's chuckle nearly startled him, and it was obvious she'd been listening in on the conversation for a little bit of time from where she was standing in the doorway.

"No you weren't," Raine said, but it was the farthest from a criticism he'd ever heard from her.

"No, I wasn't. But I'd like to try?"

_ooo_

Laguna took small steps the next time that Raine took him outside, and then for several tries after that. He wanted to leap and jump and fly to Deling, but it became obvious that it would continue to be slow going. But she was there, smacking away his elbow when he got clumsy and chastising him when he tried to do more than he was capable of.

He could almost make a full patrol at this rate, as long as Raine walked with him.

"Remind me never to leap off cliffs again." There walks were typically quiet, as he knew that his stories of his short and unfruitful time in the army weren't bound to impress her, and anything else he could think of sounded ridiculous. But eventually he decided that the ridiculous was better than nothing.

"She must have been very beautiful, for you to do something like that."

It was strange that Raine leapt straight to that subject, as before it obvious that she found his pining to be a little ridiculous.

"Julia was but... I'd only ever talked to her once. Great talk, but it was mostly about our careers."

"Love of a lifetime, for sure." The sarcasm in her tone was apparent.

He winced. "I mean, it could have been more. I don't know. Maybe. I only knew that she really wanted to sing, and then heard her on the radio."

"At least you know she's alive and well enough to live her dreams. Right?"

Raine was so practical. Kiros would probably like her quite a bit.

"Right."

The sun was setting, and Raine's hair was taking on a reddish hue like the sky. The Deling lights would be too harsh on her, Winhill's natural light suited her well.

"It's much worse if they die on you. Because there's no more might have been. Only a 'was' where an 'is' should be. So you're lucky, Laguna."

Laguna had never been the quickest man about most things, but he was starting to be good at reading grief on someone's face. And he could understand why a woman whose village had been ravaged by soldiers wearing the uniform he used to wear would take in one of those injured soldiers now.

He took her hand, and counted the first stars that began to appear.

_ooo_

"Alright, reach! Come on, you can get those cobwebs!"

His balance was back to where it should have been, and despite being somewhat tall Laguna still couldn't reach the top corners of the main room in Raine's house. Thankfully having Ellone on his shoulders gave him that bit of extra to get the very last of the cobwebs.

"Goona! THERE'S A SPIDER. IT LOOKS MAD!"

He quickly pulled Ellone off his shoulders and set her down on a nearby chair, and tried his best not to show the fact that he was probably more afraid of the spider than she was.

"Don't move. They can smell fear."

Ellone hopped off the chair and clung to his leg. He armed himself with a broom, waiting for the eight legged freak to attack.

"What is going on here?"

"GOONA MADE A SPIDER MAD!"

Laguna remained fixated on the corner, trying to be brave. He felt Raine's hands on his arm and on the broom, making him lower it.

"Ellone, even if spiders are scary looking, they have to have a home. You've got nothing to be afraid of if you don't poke it."

Laguna felt embarrassed and scratched the back of his neck. "We were just trying to clean up for you..."

Raine laughed, the kind that wasn't slightly sarcastic like he was used to. He liked her expression when she laughed, it made her look more her age, instead of the years added by responsibility. Though, he liked her other expressions too, because she had one constant to them all; a sense of being in the moment, not somewhere off in dreams or the future.

Maybe that was when he started to see _her_, instead of trying to see another dark haired woman in her place. Raine, the defender of spiders and patron of lost souls.

_ooo_

"Are we a family, Goona?"

It was the first patrol he'd gone on without Raine's assistance. Of course Ellone insisted on coming. And how could he deny such a cutie? However, her question had to be handled with the utmost delicacy.

"I... ah... I don't know, Elle."

"We should be."

Winhill quite obviously hated him, and he was starting to feel strange around Raine. There was absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to stay. Obviously.

"It's a little complicated. I think I'm technically a deserter."

"Raine says family takes care of each other."

"Well, if you're using that definition, I guess we are."

It was strange how a little girl and a woman had made all the big things that he'd jumped off a cliff for slowly evaporate. He'd expected that life and love and all the Big Important Things happened like they did in the movies; so dramatically. Maybe Winhill was the sort of place that just put everything into slow motion.

Or he was going out of his mind.

"'Sides, you'll fall on your butt alone."

Ellone always put things into the right perspective.

_ooo_

"I was thinking, Winhill doesn't really have much in the way of a militia or monster hunters or really any sort of defense."

"That was intentional on Galbadia's part." Raine kept to her chores like a clockwork machine. A rather elegant clockwork machine.

"So I guess I'm going to earn my keep and do that. At least if you're not sick of me."

She paused, her back turned to him. He held his breath.

"Well there have been complaints about monsters getting near on the north side of town. If you help out around the house too I suppose you can work off your debt."

Laguna didn't wait for her to turn around before he hugged her shoulders, pointedly ignoring the slight ache in his leg. Just as quick as it happened it was done, and they resumed their places and distance.

Things took longer in Winhill. But now he had time.


End file.
